


缘分（Yuan Feng)

by Crimson_Tears, Xiip



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series), Helluva Boss (Web Series)
Genre: Borderline sadism, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lots of Angst, M/M, Panic Attacks, Reincarnation AU, but they're there, mentions of mental illnesses, mentions of mental institutions, the rape scenes won't be graphic, we love your tears and we want more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21631153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson_Tears/pseuds/Crimson_Tears, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xiip/pseuds/Xiip
Summary: What if Angel Dust did get redeemed...and reincarnated?Will he remember anything from his time in hell? Will he miss anyone?.....will anyone miss him?缘分（Yuan Feng)Translation: Yuan Feng describes a situation where two people are lucky enough to have their lives cross, whether it be romantically or not. It is something less concrete than a soulmate or fate, something more certain than pure dumb luck. It has no English equivalent
Relationships: Alastor & Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel), Alastor/Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel), Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 41
Kudos: 186





	1. Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luminaxandra on Tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Luminaxandra+on+Tumblr).



> This fic is fluffy because it was knitted from the wool of a sheep :>  
> @luminaxandra sheared the sheep, we just did the knitting :3c
> 
> All jokes aside, this is the brain child of the wonderful Xiip (read as Sheep) and myself, spurred on by the devil herself @luminaxandra on Tumblr with her amazing fanart.  
> Go check her out, she is incredibly talented and her art is always a masterpiece! Love you Lumi <3
> 
> We don't own any of the characters listed in this fanfiction. All referenced characters belong to VivziePop. Except for that OC we mentioned, of course

“I can’t have a single night of dreamless sleep, can I?” Angelo thought to himself as he dragged a shaky hand down his pale face, which would have been pretty if not for his sunken cheeks and heavy eyebags. Noticing that his hand was drenched in a cold sweat, he resisted the urge to gag as the ever present stench hit his nostrils. Shivering with disgust and the chill, he untangled his too-thin limbs from his blanket and made his way over to the conjoined bathroom to start his day, still half asleep and with a mind plagued with whispers of radio static, cheery flashes of pink and blonde, and a grouchy blur of grey. 

Life never seemed to give him a break from torment. It constantly reminded him that there were memories in his mind that were not his own.They invaded his head at random, sometimes multiple times a day, in forms of panic inducing flashbacks, dreams, or rather nightmares. The modern society that demanded conformity and efficiency did not take too lightly to this. He cursed every god he knew as he made his way to his current job at a dingy coffee shop, his shock of white hair only halfway decent and draped in clothes that hung off his malnourished frame. He knew he looked like a ghost zombie walking and didn’t give a flying fuck. As far as he was concerned, all fault fell to whatever wretched deity that brought him here into this world only to make him suffer. 

His parents were the first to notice that something about him was...amiss. He was around four years old, very keen on drawing, as most kids that age were, so his parents bought him endless crayons and coloring pencils to play with. At first, it all seemed to be perfectly normal, their little kid was talented; he was making up new characters by the day! Until they came into his room one day, to find that he had pinned the pictures he drew up on his wall. Except, they were all of the same few characters, each getting at least ten drawings of varying poses, in varying situations. 

A snake with pink eyes that always frowned, a pink cyclops girl with cherries and freckles, a dark blur of a grey face and a long pink body seemed to appear the least, but always sat in the corners of the drawings. More often, they were doodles of a gray cat with red wings who never smiled, a small blob of pink and orange who always had a feather duster, a girl in grey and a girl in pink. There were also small doodles, the rarest of them all, of a white haired character, always with a small pig that never had a face. They always wore the same colors, and sometimes were crossed out with something like frustration. One character, however, stood out, the red of his hair and coat dominating the little boys wall. A man with curling antlers and a yellow smile. He decorated the wall like splatters of blood, coloured with passionate, violent strokes. He sang, he danced, he read books, he bled and he bullied the snake but laughed with the girl in pink. He kissed the boy with white hair, but that was crossed out. The pictures with him in it never had the character with grey skin as all the other drawings did. A truly unsettling feeling settled heavily in his mother’s stomach, baffled to the idea that such a young child like Angelo had the mental capacity to make characters so unique; it was almost as if they were breathing. Sentient. 

They talked it over, but in the end, as any parent would do, they simply shrugged it off as “oh, children, so imaginative!” and didn’t quite think of it again. That is, until Angelo turned 9, and the bright, dreamy boy changed. He distanced himself from his friends and family, always looking over his shoulder, petrified of something, yet no one could quite understand what. His daydreams and fantastical stories became waking nightmares that seemed to trigger on random. They brought the young boy to his knees..sometimes literally.

His parents, as well as some of his teachers, attempted to coax him into talking to them about it in every way they could: bribing the child with sweets, new toys, new games, sat him down and gave a stern talking-to. Yet, none of their planted seeds bore fruit, as the boy was often in tears whenever he tried to speak about it, which prevented him to even try explaining. 

As his parents ran out of options, Angelo’s condition only worsened. Sometimes he would stare into space with an expression edged with terror and dread, tears pooling in his eyes. Other times, the young boy would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, uttering incoherent ramblings into his blanket as he rocked himself ceaselessly until exhaustion pulled him under. His mother could only weep quietly into his hair and hold him tightly, praying desperately to God and begging Him to rid her child of this unexplainable misery.

What seemed to be the last straw for his parents, was when he began causing himself pain in other forms, physical pain that kept him tied to reality. One afternoon, as his mother, tired from a long day of work, made her way into his room to greet him, expecting her son to be resting or doing homework, instead found him scratching bloody streaks into his sides, whimpers of both pain and fear spilling from his lips, eyes glazed over from whatever horror he saw in his mind. Amid her own shock and his gasps of pain, she caught some mutterings about extra sets of arms; something about a spider; about being touched. 

It was her shriek that brought him back to reality, as she snatched his arms away from his body and screamed for help. He didn’t see his father rush into the room before passing out into her arms.

After this instance, it was an endless cycle of trips to various different child psychiatrists and counsellors. Apparently his mother thought he had been molested or worse, which had triggered such a severe episode, but it was soon clear that that was not the only problem he had. So Angelo was forced into a never-ending spiral of unknown faces with faux kindness embedded into them like it was a necessity, glaring down at him like he was some kind of abomination, something broken that they needed to fix. PTSD, they had said. Generalized anxiety and depression, others suggested. At one point, he was even diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yet, no matter what fancy, unreadable medication they prescribed him with, which techniques of coping they taught him, the flashbacks, the nightmares, they never stopped. In fact, with the drugs, the antidepressants, the exercises, they only became wilder, more vivid.

Eventually,they gave up on him, and to his, seemingly never ending torture, even his parents did. They could only sit uncomfortably by, try to shush him and apologise if he had an episode in public. By some miracle, he survived high school, but of course every other college would take one look at his abysmal results and long history of mental illnesses and refuse his application. So here he was now, incapable of continuing his education, and not wanting to anyway. Angelo jumps from shitty job to shittier job, simply to support his most basic needs. He moved out of his parents house a long time ago, despite his mothers worried protests. He could practically hear the relief in her tone anyway. What remains of his human pride would never accept financial support from them, not when he had done nothing but make their life horrible, and dash their hopes of having a proper, _functioning_ son. He would never admit that he sometimes missed being loved, being cherished. More often, though, he just missed having a full stomach.

Angelo was a loner, so to say. He didn’t allow anyone near him, literally or figuratively, for fear of hurting them. Whether it was with one of his episodes of derealization — he liked to call it “Twenty Minutes of Hell”— or being forced to watch as they go through the same anguish his parents went through realizing they could do nothing to help him. He could not allow himself to bring that kind of pain to someone else again. Angelo simply wasn’t worth it.

Yet these ‘episodes’ that always discomforted and hurt others were often something of a guilty pleasure to him. The people and voices he couldn't stop seeing or hearing warmed him to his soul with a heartbreaking nostalgia that always had him gasping in tears in the end, joy and anguish tearing at his heart. He longed for them all, illogical, fantastical, impossible as it was, he wished for a place among them, just like the tall spider in white did, the one he resonated so strongly with, the one he never saw the face of. 

Although no one else seemed to catch it, Angelo was slowly pinning his episodes down to certain triggers that even he barely understood. Grey fur, red feathers, sharp teeth, sexual implications of any form...and standing out among them all, the cause of the worst ones, the clearest floods of memory, radio static, a certain laugh, and red, the red of that man…the always smiling man, that made his heart flutter and chest seize with a senseless, blind desire to be near him, to be something to him. 

_What was his name?_

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇ 

Something Angelo found, as he grew, the...memories, if you will, only got worse. The young man had barely gotten out of high school when the particularly soul crushing hallucinations and flashbacks began, as if whatever or whoever that fed these to him sensed that he had more free time and decided to fill those times with such lifelike hallucinations he could almost touch them. There were even multiple instances where Angelo had, during work hours, collapsed or had a panic attack because he had a particularly hard time telling the reality apart from his memories. Just after one particularly bad incident, the distressed boy had begun weeping for someone named Charlie to save him from his misery. None of his co-workers at the time had the name Charlie, and neither had he ever known someone named Charlie. Needless to say, from that day on, his co-workers weren’t too keen on being near him. Whether it was for fear of being in physical danger from his outbursts, or simply because he was a freak, he didn’t know and neither did he care.

They all varied in intensity and strength, going up and down the scale, until Angelo could no longer tell the difference between the worst of the easiest and the easiest of the worst. The lines between them had long blurred to nothingness, as had everything else in his life. But the one which takes the prize as the worst episode in his opinion is an instance that took place in his current job, on a particularly long day.

He had been working for 8 hours straight when it happened. Considering he worked in a coffee shop, he was in the presence of the scent of said bean juice on the daily, and it had never being a problem. Until, of course, he caught a whiff of a particular order that he hadn’t taken since he started working there, which, now that he thought about it, must’ve been for the fact that it was so atrocious; without any sugar, milk or cream, entirely black coffee, with a few extra shots of espresso. As soon as the smell hit, his mind went ablaze, and his vision filled with scenes of that man in bloody crimson with the smile drinking the same sort of coffee, staining his teeth. Sometimes he had a book, sometimes he was talking to someone with a heartbreakingly soft expression that somehow made Angelo’s heart twist with jealousy. He realised his knees must have given way when the harsh sound of cups breaking into a million pieces clawed at his ears. He paid them no mind, the deafening thoughts were filling him up as if the man himself was pouring them into his ears with his static-filled voice of muffled words, until he burst into a frantic ramble, in futile attempts of recalling just what brand of coffee it was that he preferred. 

It wasn’t until nearly half an hour later that he came back to the horrible reality, his tear stricken face and the tremors in his body testament enough to what trouble the damaged man. It took a couple of long seconds to gather that he was in a heap among some bags of coffee beans in the backroom, his mind still swimming with the scent of too-bitter coffee and alluring, static laughter. He must have let out some kind of sound as his manager was storming in and starting to yell at him. Before his eyelids slid to shut him back into the darkness of his mind, Angelo mused, how was it that a demonic, too-loud voice that was always filled with static far more soothing that a normal human one that never failed to grate on his ears?

The next day, he woke up in an all too familiar hospital, with the same grim faces adorned with forced smiles and puzzled frowns dressed up as concern, greeting him in familiarity; after all, he ended up in here at least twice a week. They had the same answers as they always did: “Unnaturally high brain activity, we advise you to consult a neurologist, as well as a psychiatrist,”, knowing neither of those will be able to help him, or rather, they wouldn’t want to. He’s tried already, too many times, he had tried. Angelo stared listlessly out of his bedside window towards the trees shivering in the autumn wind, the spider crawling diligently, purposefully on the window sill. 

He wished he would be able to become as simple as a spider one day, satisfied in his own little web, never having to worry if he fit in with the other spiders.

Angelo wished that this never ending cycle would just end. That he would end. 


	2. An End?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every ending is just another beginning and door to a different plane of existence, isn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooo boy, this is a monster chapter. We're sorry it took so long to make, finals week for me and holidays for Xiip really put a damper on our writing. But here it is!
> 
> Trigger warnings: Suicide/overdose and implied/attempted rape

The courtyard of the psychiatric hospital—named Angelic Heights Sanatorium, so at least someone had a sense of humor in this place— in the morning always saw a small flood of its residents pool into it, seeking refuge from the stale interior under the sky. It was a grey morning that day, when the courtyard was slowly becoming crowded as its more harmless, able-bodied residents dragged themselves out of the sterile white building for their daily activities, mostly some kind of exercise routine the doctors had subscribed them to. 

Loitering around in their soft blue uniforms, some did simple stretches and wandered about, a few chatted with each other, a couple talked loudly into empty space. No one seemed to notice the shriveled, fetal posture of the young man propped up against one of the few scrappy trees in the courtyard. His white hair, greasy and unkempt as it was, was shaved into the hairstyle that all the prisoners, that is, patients, here had once they were confirmed to be long-term residents. His eyes were dull and lifeless, weighed down with deep purple bags, his stare forever blankly glued somewhere into the middle distance. His skin was so pale, if it had not been for the slow—horribly, unnaturally slow—rise and fall of his skeletal back, and the occasional shaking fit, he could have easily passed off as a marble statue. Once closer, one could see the subtle shivers that run through every too-skinny limb that could only be partly attributed to the morning chill. Sometimes, he would clutch his head as if in pain. Other times, he would spend hours rocking himself back and forth, heaving and gasping with dried up tears, chest rising painfully with breaths and making his throat akin to a desert. Always, he mumbled. Always, his lips tremble with words tumbling out too fast for his mouth to catch. Never a word, not once, did he speak.

The doctors had given up on Angelo once again, though that would suggest they had any real hope for him in the first place. He just...couldn't function anymore, they said, not in any way that would allow him to fit in with the rest of society. That's why they shelved him in this place, papers stamped and filed, just one more name on a list of records. One more broken machine that could not be fixed in the trash heap.  
They drowned his body in medicine and injections and IV drops. All those efforts, even those “experimental treatments” were in vain. Angelo refused to eat or drink, or even sleep, at least, as much as his body could handle. Often, they waited for him to collapse to hook him up to an IV, force feed him, whatever they saw fit to do.  
He stopped caring about his body a long, long time ago, and he had stopped listening to their ramblings for aeons.  
In fact, most of reality had long become background noise for the young man as the memories that had plagued him all his life became worse with time. The flashbacks more frequent, lasting longer, and as his memories became more violent, so did his fits during those episodes. Recently, the man in red, the one with radios and books and everlasting smiles, had consumed his entire being. There was not a single waking moment when he did not think about that man. Who was he? Why was he so dear to him? He had black tentacles, he had deer antlers. He had a fluffy deer’s tail that somehow felt taboo to look at. He had brutal scars running up and down his lean body, yet no one has ever laid a hand or claw on him. Somehow, Angelo knew all of this as fact, the surest things in his drug haze of a life.  
Angelo knew more about this man, this strange man with a strange smile and stranger body, than he knew himself.  
If only Angelo could remember his name. His name. His name….

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇ 

No matter how many hours he took out of his day, which was, if he were to be honest, every waking second of his life, he simply couldn't recall that name. It tormented him, always on the tip of his tongue. Sometimes it crawled up his throat as though it wanted out, though never truly escaped. 

Sometimes, in fleeting moments of clarity, Angelo felt as if he could scream the word out into the world, like some cancerous tumor that had been sitting in his mind for as long as he could remember. Those moments never lasted, and that name would dance away again, out of reach, as if whatever deity that found it amusing to toy with him was dangling it in front of him like some feathered cat toy, waiting for the second he pounced to snatch it away. Maybe he just wasn’t supposed to know it, maybe these memories were because God fucked up, maybe they shouldn’t exist. Just like him, a mistake. Just something to be corrected and, failing that, removed.

It was possible that these were memories of some… past life; Angelo had debated the possibility of it for years, nothing seemed too crazy for him at this point. He wished they were just a tad clearer, more satisfying and concrete than blurred thoughts and random bits of knowledge. Yet, he still tries to remember, to recall every little detail, no matter how fuzzy it may be. Every minute of every day of every week, hoping that maybe, just maybe, whatever God there is up in the heavens would feel pity towards a skeletal ghost in soft, pale, sickly blue. 

Regardless, his current life was enough of a nightmare even without divine intervention. Surely it was worse, he often mused, than even hell could be. The mental institution tried its best to keep its reputation true to its angelic name, insisting that they offered their patients recovery with dignity and compassion, everything was sunshine and rainbows; nothing remotely even discomforting here folks, no siree!  
But as always with those who doth protest too much, the truth swept under the carpet was the opposite of what they say.

The first psychologist Angelo was assigned to was one prime example of the lovely spirit of the asylum. Just about every appointment with the man, who in physique resembled a rather beer-bellied bear, was a near-nightmarish experience. He was nothing compared to the horrors and creatures Angelo had to face down during his episodes, but the wrath of the medical professional, made clear in his loud, booming roars still left Angelo shivering nonetheless. Those one-sided screaming fits were always Angelo’s fault anyway, or so the man always assumed it to be; the psychologist’s pills or treatments hadn't worked on this bleached anomaly of a man once and most likely never will. Pride did not allow him to doubt his own methods, his expertise, the man was far too sure in his skills to accept that Angelo simply could not be helped. So the wretched fool began believing that the young man was actually lying, purposefully, maliciously trying to be a blotch on his otherwise perfect records.

He took his anger out on Angelo in petty, subtle ways. At first, it had been long, one-sided ‘conversations’, in which the man would accuse Angelo of lies and falsehood while squeezing out concern and sliding in snide insults. Once, a session ended with a hard, stinging blow to Angelo’s face and a bark of orders for the nurses to sedate the ‘violently unstable’ patient and put him in a straightjacket for the night, to be released come morning. The drugs that were meant to calm his nerves only made those ever-restless memories worse, until he could barely tell reality from imagination, until he felt gentle, phantom touches, full of affection he had last felt during childhood. It made him sick with nostalgia and yearning. His eyes watered, then overflowed, the barren, shriveled desert in his heart unable to contain his emotions. Angelo’s tears flowed freely even after the touches, barely there, finally managed to lull him to sleep.  
His cheek was black and blue for over a week, but with the memory of that not-so terrible night sitting warm in his chest, Angelo found that he did not mind the treatment as much.

Later on, Angelo had lost all respect and energy to deal with these sessions and refused to even nod or shake his head to the psychologist's probing that was his only way of communication with the man. This lack of response spurned the man on more than ever before. Suddenly, halfway through his increasingly-passionate rant at the skinny patient without so much as a flinch from his target, the doctor erupted. His face exploding into a wrathfully red, he lunged for the pale patient and seized him by his too-thin arm, digging his meaty fingers in until he broke skin. The psychologist dragged Angelo out of the office and out into the under-heated hallways, heading for what Angelo knew to be the isolation wards.  
Angelo had tried to fight back, he really did, but not eating and not moving for days on end had taken its toll, his muscles too shriveled and wasted to do much besides clawing weakly at his assailants arms as he was dragged along like an awkward luggage bag. 

Not that Angelo ever had any true strength in his form, his mind whispered to him through his desperation and pain. At some point, through his haze of panic, the familiar sensation of a flashback surfaced. With a desperate cry, Angelo lurched for the psychologist's face and managed to sink a finger into the eye of the top-heavy man. He roared in pain and rage, dropping Angelo to try and assess the damage done to his own face. The pale young man scrambled to get away, find someone, anyone to get him away from the real psycho in this place.  
He never got very far.  
Within moments, one of his strongest flashbacks yet hit like a punch to his face, and Angelo collapsed against the freezing wall in a heap of shuddering limbs. He could barely whimper, feeling his body go numb, the pain fading away along with the rest of his senses. He fought to keep his eyes open, to get up, make his stupid sticks-for-legs obey, to scream his own useless wrath and agony out into the world. But his body would not listen and his voice was far too hoarse. The psychologist was already recovering and calling for nurses. Angelo’s eyes pricked with the hopelessness of it all, before the world faded away and rebuilt itself into the city of his literal dreams.

Everything was blurry still, clearest only in his peripherals and fading into blotches of colour if he tried to focus. He could not move nor speak, the sole member of the audience to whatever horror show that was on air. Angelo could hear heavy, labored breathing tearing through some poor sod’s lungs and unsteady footsteps echoing in the tight alley he was in. It took him a few seconds to realize the noises were made by his body, or at least the body he found himself in during this particular flashback. It was taller, stronger and horribly injured. Detached as he was, Angelo could still feel the echoes of its pain. The body’s leg gave out for a moment, crashing into the dusty red wall, but righted itself quickly and hobbled on. The owner of the body looked down, his voice, though muffled, was notably low and angry in what could only be cursing at its limp. Angelo caught a good look, with what felt like six too many eyes, at the deep crimson blur all over those long, thin legs that too many joints. Those arms, one set too many, held a large gun he knew in his gut had ran out of bullets.  
The next thing he knew, there was shouting, more gunshots ringing through the air behind them. Although Angelo knew that it was not his body, adrenaline, unclear if it was his or the body’s, kicked in, making his mind swim. The gunshots were getting closer, he realized. There was a sickening sound of a bullet ricocheting off of the bricks just behind them. The owner cursed again, legs wobbling, tripping over his own joints.  
Suddenly, the body’s head snapped up, an echo of the spark of recognition and gratefulness ran through Angelo’s conscious. Two red lights blinked to light before him, radio dials spinning in the middle of them. The owner said something, a name Angelo could not catch, a name starting with A. As the body slowly slid down the brickwall in relief, Angelo was struck by all-too familiar sounds. Clack clack clack of hard heeled shoes, the swish of a red coat torn at its hems, the burst of static in the reply of the smiling man who had haunted Angelo all his life. The red coat, covered in a nostalgic smell, was draped across their shoulders. The man who never stopped smiling walked on, and snapped his fingers. The begging and screaming that followed brought a bubbling gurgle of laughter to the body’s lips and a whimper of desire and fear to Angelo’s nonexistent ones.

The last thing he saw before he was pulled back to his own cruel reality was the broad back of a crimson man and his dancing shadows. 

The damp alleyway that smelled of gunpowder was gone like mist under the sun, leaving Angelo to blink awake to a narrow and unfamiliar padded room, with barely room to even walk in. The only furniture it sported was a rickety-looking bed shoved against the wall, a toilet and a solid steel door as its means of entry and exit. The rumored and much feared isolation ward. Angelo supposed it was pathetic of him to be grateful to not be in a straightjacket. After what must have been hours of deafening silence in the soundproofed room, it finally sank in that he would not be getting out of here anytime soon. During his time in the room, Angelo laid on the rock-hard bed and thought out loud to himself, putting all of his thoughts into words. Everything that he saw and felt during that flashback, every small detail, the unplaceable name of the cologne the man in red used, or was it that he naturally smelled like that? The body, the person, that he had been in had known the man, had been saved and possibly loved by the man. Angelo spent three weeks of isolation thinking about the body he had been in, how strangely right and nostalgic it felt, to have four arms and probably more, to have legs that had too many joints. Most of all, the man with the yellow smile and static voice stalked his every waking moment, consuming him like never before.  
“What was his name what was his name ...something...something starting with A.”

After that instance, Angelo's agony took on a new level, the psychologist coming up with cruler and worse punishments with every passing day, taking out everything that went wrong in his life on Angelo, using him like an emotional and physical punching bag. The deities, it seemed, had a taste for his agony. 

Even ‘better’, the doctors and staff weren't the only ones that mistreated Angelo.

When he first arrived in the hospital, no one truly paid attention to him much. He was just another inmate they had to play nice with until they were gone from this festering cesspit of a mental institution or...until they were gone. Angelo welcomed it, sat in corners and made himself as small as possible, trying to escape from everyone’s attention. It was refreshing, to be ‘normal’, as normal as it gets in this building of nutjobs, not being stared at like he was some kind of abomination, or like some animal in a zoo, a circus show for freaks with three heads instead of one. In this whirlpool of lost souls, he was just another face to forget.

Unfortunately, that peace was short lived.  
After the initial months of being blissfully ignored, a certain group of patients, four of them to be exact, had began to notice how delicate Angelo’s features were. He had exotic white hair that, when left long, framed his face like a circle of light. Soft, porcelain pale skin that made him look like a glass doll, complete with light splatters of freckles on his cheekbones and large, mesmerising grey eyes crowned with long, curling lashes. Although marred by malnutrition and his own unconcern for his appearance and well-being, past his sunken cheeks, lifeless eyes and nearly grey skin, Angelo was attractive.  
The imperfection did not seem to matter to the group, they began to secretly ogle Angelo, sometimes even openly leering at him, chuckling and whistling among themselves whenever Angelo showed so much as an extra inch of skin. They spent weeks stalking him, following his every move hawkishly, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike and get what they felt entitled to.

After group therapy one afternoon, they cornered Angelo in the corridors. They were all larger and stronger than him, leaving Angelo no way to fight back and a strong sense of deja vu from the psychologist's incident as they pinned his arms behind him, slapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him off to the nearest bathroom for some ‘privacy’.  
Slamming him against the cold tiles, they were practically drooling as they tried to pry him from his defensive fetal position, trying to rip his clothes right off his back.

One of them cooed, in the worst attempt at seduction Angelo had ever heard, “C’mon, slut, your body was just begging for this, you just never noticed,”

“What, did ya sick schmucks think I’ve never noticed you in your little corners, looking at my ankles like a buncha fucking sexually repressed Victorian maidens or some shit?” Angelo shot back, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible as he struggled to retain his modesty while the other three continued to tear at his shirt and pants,  
“Like, really toots? Some shitty virgin incel could do better.”

The other man’s grin twisted into a scowl, “Boys, I think Princess here need to be taught a lesson,” The one behind Angelo wrestled him into a choke hold while another took advantage of his instinctual reaction to claw at the large arm constructing his throat to wrench his arms away at last, while the last man ripped open Angelo’s shirt, making buttons fly.

Angelo’s mind felt like it had been split open, memories flooding through him, swaying on the verge of a flashback, of experiences he’s never had, experiences that made him want to crawl out of his skin. He tried to scream, but the men just clapped a hand over his mouth and laughed.

Before they could get any further than taking his shirt off, the temperature suddenly plummeted, an unnatural gust of wind snaking through the moldy room. The assailants paused, swearing and looking around, their breaths coming out in white puffs. They shivered, trying to figure out what just happened, forgetting about Angelo for a moment, leaving him slumped in the corner.  
One of them finally turned around, “Hey- hey what the fuck is that?”

Looming from Angelo’s shadow was a dark, humanoid figure. Angelo only caught a glimpse of it before the light bulbs above them began to flicker, rattling violently, before exploding one by one, sparks and shards of glass raining down on all of them. The room was covered in utter darkness, which didn't make any sense as there had been a window. The four men scrambled about, cursing, yelling and shoving the blame at each other and Angelo. One of them had started crying. The white haired man just sat there, knees too weak to stand, a horribly desperate sense of hope and relief in his gut. 

Attracted by the commotion, no doubt, the door that the four men had been searching for swung open, framing a few shocked nurses who had came ready to subdue whatever that was going on. The scene was easy enough to read with the thin white man’s shirt in shreds on the floor, and a quick testimony from the trembling Angelo sealed the fate of the other four. They were forced from the room, protesting that Angelo was violent, that he knew witchcraft, that he was to blame for it all. Angelo just really hoped they all rot in the isolation wards. 

As he was being led out of the bathroom, the shivering young man glanced back at the corner where the shadowy figure had been, looking for what he did not know. There was the faintest wisp of red. The lightest rasp of static. When he snapped his head back, eyes wide and hungry for any sign of the man in red, the man with the most charismatic, evil, dashing smile...there was nothing but dirty tiles and mold, and the remains of his shirt. But just as he hung his head in disappointment, Angelo could have sworn that a certain soft warmth, so different from the biting cold from moments ago, wrapped around him, all the way until he was safely back in his own ward.

Even now, curled in the courtyard, ignoring and ignored, as Angelo thought back to the incident, he knew it was him. It had to be. There was no denying that familiar presence, the radio static, the red hair, saving him from those pieces of shit. There was no way the man was some kind of cheesy guardian angel playing hero. Judging from his flashbacks, he had to be a demon or spirit of sorts, watching over him for whatever reason. Probably just because he has those memories at all, and was eventually going to eat his soul or some bullshit like that. His life is one upside down clusterfuck of a mess, so of course, he gets his very own demon protector, straight from Hell, and he wouldn't have it any other way. 

It was at that point that he decided he was going to meet that demon protector of his, find him and find out who he was, what those memories meant. Who he had been. Angelo was pretty sure he was going to Hell anyway, whether he died now or wait until he was eighty, it didn’t matter. This world, this life of flashbacks that were not truly his, the isolation he never could escape, and the painful need for love, for comfort, for that damned red man with his damn smile. It was all just so, so much. Too much. It just...didn’t feel worth it anymore. Not when there was certainly a better ‘life’ after death for him. 

So, Angelo set his resolve, and he had to be smart about it all. There were only so many ways to accomplish his goal in this godforsaken high-security prison of an asylum. He set out to stockpile drugs, taking it out of medication and daily doses. He skimmed, always taking just a tidbit more than he was supposed to take, or leave out a tablet or two. A pill here, a pinch of powder there, so no one noticed it missing. He would hide it in his pillow, make pockets under his mattress, dig small spaces behind the sink pipes. Filling up those spaces and making more as the days went on, dragging oh so slowly to his goal. Often still, Angelo would try remembering the red man’s name. He didn't really want to go to him without knowing who he was. More often than not, he would be reduced to a blubbering, weeping mess. Until he could no longer squeeze out any more tears. Until he was heaving and gasping. Until all he could do was mutter, again and again, mind long broken and bent to resist, "What was his name something beginning with A what was his name something beginning with A-"  
The name never did come, not even in the end.

Months later, on a night when Angelo bought out some assholes in a few wards down the corridor to raise some commotion to keep the nurses on patrol busy. It was amazing, and revolting, how much a wink and a promise of intimacy could make men do. Then again, with what he was about to commit, Angelo was in no real place to judge. Gathering all the sundry pills, tablets, powders and even a few liquids he had collected so far into his bed along with his water pitcher, Angelo took a moment to reflect. Back to the frightened little boy his mother had held in her arms during all those nights of terror before he had become numb to his episodes. Maybe he never really grew past being that boy, but now he has more reason than ever to despise his condition, his existence as a retainer or conduit for these memories of a stranger. More reason than ever to escape that existence. Besides, it was far too late to get cold feet.

The overdose kicked in half an hour after he cleared out his mountain of medication. His heart hammered in his throat, constricting his breaths. His stomach wanted to lurch out of his body and throw itself out of the door. Sweating, shivering so hard he was practically vibrating and black dots swimming in his vision, Angelo smiled. Something crossing a laugh and a wail bubbled past his lips. He tore up his sheets beforehand, gagging and tying himself to the shaky bed frame in case an episode happens in his last moments. Angelo could already feel his slowly melting mind slipping into the same old loop of begging to know the red man’s name. With his last bit of conscious thought, Angelo prayed, to whatever god that was up there to send him to Hell, or wherever that man was. To never have another’s memories thrust upon him again. 

His body was found in the morning, sprawled across his bed, various powders still dusting his hands, his face, his hair. Through all that he had suffered, in life and at death he had taken his last breath with a hopeful smile, the kind one would see on a child falling asleep anticipating a bright, adventurous tomorrow, frozen on his face in rigor mortis. Angelo was dead, and he had never seemed happier, truly believing that he will finally, truly meet the one he loved.

And he did.

…Didn’t he?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The fic most likely won't have a set upload schedule, since both Sheep and me are quite busy, but we will try our best to post as frequently as possible! :D Hope you enjoyed it


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